Tactics on both sides mirror typical labor disputes

Striking RN Amy LaBrie didn't expect she'd be picketing in front of her fellow community members' homes as the strike wore on, and it was a difficult step for her to take.

"These are things I never thought I would have to do," said LaBrie, a 26-year Northern Michigan Hospital veteran nurse. "It's a very hard thing to do, but I thought if I was going to be part of this strike, that I had to be part of every aspect of it if it was going to help."

The striking nurses have used a number of tactics during the walk-out typical in unionization efforts, such as picketing outside the homes of the 11 NMH board members.

Likewise, the hospital has engaged in what can be viewed as typical management tactics during the strike with about half its RN workforce.

An outsider looking in can recognize common strategies used by both sides in labor disputes.

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"What the hospital is trying to do and what the employees who are on strike are trying to do is increase their bargaining leverage in some way," said Michael Belzer, professor of industrial relations at Wayne State University and adjunct research scientist at the University of Michigan. "If they cannot get it at the bargaining table, then they need to go outside of that environment and try to find support other places."

One common union tool is picketing board members' homes, said Belzer, who also holds a Ph.D. in industrial relations from Cornell University.

As has also occurred in Petoskey, strikers have been putting pressure on businesses associated with the board members in an unannounced boycott and through handbilling outside the businesses - another common strategy to urge negotiations.

As the strike wears on and the acrimony continues, Belzer said more tactics can be expected. That includes both sides trying to raise the stakes of disagreement "to force the other party to come closer to the other," he said.

To that end, unions will repeatedly raise the issue of whether the company is negotiating in good faith, or merely surface bargaining. When a company mentions how many times it met prior to issuing a final contract offer - in this case, NMH says 26 meetings were held - Belzer said it implies good-faith bargaining when that may not be the case.

"The question is, how much movement was made on both sides?" he said.

Not familiar with the intimacies of the NMH RN strike, Belzer said: "My guess is if you look closely at what actually happened in this bargaining, they didn't move very far."

When management uses the argument of a close unionization vote, Belzer said that shouldn't matter.

"What it means is they don't support the legal right of the employees to organize," he said. "They have probably fought the union all the way through the unionizing campaign and now they still haven't gotten the first contract."

Belzer also said it's typical for unions to file unfair labor practice charges throughout the strike against the company, as the Teamsters have done in the local dispute.

Familiar with a variety of labor disputes, Belzer said he suspects an anti-union attitude in this rural region of Michigan is fueling the strike, even though the state as a whole ranks third in the nation for most unionized workers.

"The company may be playing to that rural attitude that is antagonistic to collective bargaining," he said.